The Story of Us by P.A.Levy

I’m the kind of person who would have gone to a publicwitch burning to find out what kind of kindling was hip,you would have gone to public hangings to see if the guiltyjerk and spasm, piss themselves; puddle or spray?

Yes, it’s true, I would superglue a pound cointo the pavement and find enjoyment watching a chancercasually try to pick it up, but you would dropa fifty ton weight. The coin was bait. You watched far too many cartoonswhen you should have been studying for your GCSEs.

I might go to the scene of a car crash only to collectthe shattered pieces of red and amber glassfor my mosaic. You would want copies of policephotographs, hunt for blood stainsand gather up bits of limbs.

When we played cut and paste in the libraryI thought it a laughto slash out the odd paragraph, or write coded messageson page one hundred and sixty three. Never content,you spliced pages from hardcore porno into large print editions of romantic fiction. You even assassinatedthe final pages from the who-done-its. Snip. Snip.

I hate you.

I hate you because you told that priest he smeltlike a peadophile and we spent all those yearsin purgatory. And because you stood up in school assemblyand blurted out that the headmaster wears frilly lingerie,swore blind you had seen him in the gym mistress’s PE kit,we got two months detention; thanks for that.

I hate you for telling every foreman on every jobto get stuffed and then for looking befuddledas to why we always get the sack, that you always pickarguments with biggest blokes in pubs, and because you tellevery woman that we meet they look like tarts.Then have the nerve to ask how much a blow job costs.

On a radio phone-in you toldthe nation I’m a habitual masturbator,knicker sniffer, pussycat fiddler,you just had to give out my real nameand where I live. It seems this compulsion to humiliateis all the motivation you really need.

I hate that you are there for the thickbut never the thin.That I can’t get the better of you,I can never win.Charged with insincerityand feigning compunctionwithout due care and attentionI stand accusedwhilst you sit back and grin.